If you’re only interested in the technical architecture, feel free to skip to the TL;DR stack summary below.
This project is personally meaningful to me. It started as a small website for my dad’s retirement puppy breeding business — something simple to list available puppies. It quickly grew into something much larger and ultimately became the operational center of the business. Along the way, it also became my first true full-stack production system and my largest early Node.js project.
What began as “just a website” evolved into a complete application: authentication, admin workflows, relational data modeling, media pipelines, deployment automation, infrastructure hardening, and long-term unattended operation. The system ran in production for over a year with non-technical users managing everything through the admin panel without needing code access.
The admin interface remains fully functional, so public credentials are not exposed. If a technical reviewer needs to explore the system, I can provide temporary demonstration access.